Yikes! I found 1 ugly guy walking across our hardwood kitchen floor. I’ve never seen one, but a googled “huge ant” and a carpenter ant is definitely what I saw. I do know of the damage they can cause, so of course, I’m worried.
Has anyone out there had any experience with this? I could use some advice!
Google research says not to spray, that you must find the nest - if there is one. Since I’ve seen only 1 ant, it may be that it was a loner searching for food and there is no nest in the house?? Google “experts” seem to suggest that. But, we do have an unfinished crawl under part of the house. We’ve lived here nearly 20 years, no problems with insects in the crawl ever before.
I would call a company to come out and check, but I’m sure they would spray and might not search for the source. I don’t want to spray unnecessarily. We would vacate the house even if assured that the spray was non-harmful to humans and my research says that if you spray without finding the queen, the workers will be killed and the queen will just produce more ants.
I’ve had bigger problems with carpenter bees than carpenter ants. Do you have a pest control service who does routine treatments? If so, Call them. Wouldn’t be too worried about one ant.
I have had success with those ant baits (raid makes some) supposedly the ants carry the poison back to their nest and it kills them at the source. Buy a pack and put one in the kitchen where you saw the ant and maybe put the rest in likely places (the crawl space)
Call an exterminator. You need to treat. The exterminator can set baits. I wouldn’t freak if you only saw one. Living in an area where they are prevalent, we have our home treated a few times per year.
The ants tend to like water damaged or water logged wood. They also come into homes looking for water sources so you’ll often find them around the kitchen sink or dishwasher.
An exterminator is your best bet because these guys can do a lot of damage. In the meantime, cut any tree branches that may touch your house - it can be an expressway to your home. Look around your home, particularly around window and door frames, for little piles of sawdust - in general, these will be the closest to the source. If you find you live where these are common (I do, can you tell? !), it helps to be on a regular plan with the exterminator - far better than waiting until you see them (or possibly hear them - a little clicking sound). We learned this the hard way!
We had them. When we first moved in, I’d notice the occasional one on the dining room ceiling in a particular corner.
Two years after we moved in, we tore off a large deck and had a wrap around covered porch built in its place. Of course a bunch of siding had to come off. In that corner of the house where we’d see an ant occasionally- yeah, that was a problem area. There was a gutter downspout that went down that exterior wall and would overflow. When they tore off some exterior structure, they traced the issue down to the sill board. That’s the big chunk of wood that goes on the concrete foundation that you build the house structure on top of.
It was chock full of termites and carpenter ants. We had termite traps all around the house but they never caught anything. The company - when they came out and inspected - said “oh, we don’t cover those types of termites.” What?? Anyway, useless coverage. We paid to have the house jacked up and the sill board replaced. No carpenter ants since then. They indicated a problem that couldn’t be seen by anywhere inside or outside the house.
@jym626 - Have you tried the hanging carpenter bee traps you can buy a craft fairs? I really didn’t give it much hope but we bought one last year at a fair last year. It really does work. You can make them too but ours was less than $10.
Thanks, @MichiganGeorgia . The biggest problem was with our deck, which we had rebuilt last year with trex, so that problem is solved. If they start to make holes in the trim around the garage again, I’ll look into those traps. But not sure where to hang them. Suggestions?
@jym626 - We have one hanging on our front porch. Ours has a little blue roof so it’s not unattractive. I would hang it near where you are having problems.
That’s just it. If they go after the trim around the garage again there may be nowhere reachable to hang it. I’ll scope it out. And it’s a good excuse to go to another craft fair and buy stuff I don’t need
We used to have a lake house. The house had a metal roof-it looked like individual shingles, not the standing seam metal roof. One day in July, we were coming up the steps from the boat house, and a guest said “OMG look at your roof! It’s moving!” We looked, and yes, it looked like the roof was undulating. Very weird. DH came up several minutes later, and he said the entire roof “came off,” then he realized it was an enormous swarm of some kind. From inside the house, we saw what seemed like millions of insects swarming around on the porch. It looked like they were mating in mid air. Soon, they were coming in the house through the chimney, and through cracks in the window seals somehow. I was really freaking out. They seemed to instantly die, though.
It was the weirdest thing ever. For a week, we had to sweep these dead bugs out of our house. Dead bodies were everywhere around our house and in every single room.
We had a pest control expert come out and he said they were carpenter ants. He said they “mate,” and the males promptly die, while the females go off to lay eggs. He could not find any source in our house itself, but on our property we had a lot of wood piles left by the former owner. They carted off all the wood and treated the entire property. We never saw another ant and never again experienced a swarm.
Very very creepy. Gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it.
We had carpenter ants. I never saw a carpenter ant in the house (yes they are not the same as the little guys that come in periodically looking for water). But I saw sawdust on the end of the sofa. We have open beam ceiling in the living room. We called exterminator, they found the trail into the house was through the phone line box. They climbed a tree, got on the wire, walked all the way across the attic, then started munching on the beams. Guess they traversed through the attic. Don’t know why they didn’t stop in there somewhere.
But anyway, we didn’t have to spray or tent the whole house. They treated the wood where the ants were in the living room and baited and blocked the entry into the house. DH checks that phone line failry often!
We are near San Jose FYI so YMMV depending on geography.
One house we had them coming in the phone line and nesting in the insulation.
In the current house I see them occasional but not often. There is a powder that you can purchase at the hardware store to sprinkle around the home perimeter foundation. I do that every spring and it has really helped.
When I find a nest in the yard near the woods I use the powder on it.
For a couple of summers I’d see one or two around in the spring. One summer there were about a dozen on my slider mid-afternoon. When I woke up the next morning you they covered the slider and obv I called an exterminator. Apparently there was a nest somewhere between the slider and the deck and they had hatched…dozens! One call, $300 later and I’ve never seen another one. Knock on wood, its been about 5 years.
Thank you all for sharing your experiences! I think I will remain calm for the moment, having seen only one ant. Setting a trap or two in the crawl space also seems like a good idea.
Those things are certainly ugly! This one did not have wings, but was the largest ant I’d ever seen. I would have thought I’d had one too many, but I was drinking sparkling water that evening.
